Nissan's newest Leaf EV clears its 150-mile range in most tests

May 17, 2018

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They say admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery. So here goes: Despite today’s high-tech, energy-dense electric cars, I still have range anxiety. I blame a bad experience seven years ago with a Smart ForTwo EV that had a paltry 16-kWh battery. It was a sad tale I need not repeat here except to say that it involved the world’s worst battery state-of-charge indicator and a three-quarter-mile tow back to my driveway. But that was seven years ago and I should be cured of range anxiety by now, right?

The range of today’s EVs has gotten much better and so has the accuracy of their battery meters. Nissan says its new Leaf, which we are testing for a year, will travel a semi-whopping 150 miles on a charge. That’s not quite the Chevy Bolt’s 238 miles or the Tesla Model 3’s 310 miles, but it’s way better than the old Leaf (and the smart ForTwo, for that matter).

And Nissan provides an incredible amount of detail about its new 40-kWh battery pack and how its energy is being managed. In the gauge cluster, you can toggle through an exhaustive assortment of screens that will tell you battery temperature, battery capacity, energy economy and, of course, on-demand energy usage with miles and battery percentage remaining. There’s even a screen in the infotainment system that will show you how many kW the climate control and other systems are using in real time. It’s kind of fun to watch.

With so much information available for the driver to digest, it’d be pretty hard to ignore it all and run out of electricity, wouldn’t it?

11 of 11Next Gallery: Long Term 2018 Nissan Leaf Adding More Sport Utility With A Yakima Bike Rack

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I needed to prove to myself how far the Leaf would travel on a full charge under a wide variety of conditions. So over the course of about 10 days, I drained the battery on the long-term Leaf four times to get a real-world sense of how far I could travel on a charge.

The first was a long, uphill slog, which challenges anything with battery power. After a chilly 55-degree early morning wakeup, I set off from West Los Angeles with a full charge heading toward Willow Springs Raceway in Rosamond. It’s a location I travel to fairly often, so it seemed like a good destination. But it’s also about 180 miles round trip from my house. Could a slow and smooth pace result in a driving range far beyond Nissan’s published 150-mile number? The challenge would not necessarily be to the Leaf, but more the route to Willow, which climbs 2,500 feet. Imagine the difference between a jog on the beach and a trail run up a 2,500-foot mountain peak. You’d use more energy climbing the mountain, right? So even at a steady 55 mph with no traffic, the elevation gain hit the range hard. The Leaf’s battery pack was depleted more quickly than I imagined, forcing me to turn around in Palmdale, about 30 miles shy of my goal, and head back to West LA.

Luckily the Leaf gives you fair warning as the battery levels get low. At 10 percent charge remaining, you get a “Battery Pack is Low, Charge Now” warning. At around 3 percent, the “miles remaining” display goes dark and another warning appears telling you that the battery is “very low.” The information display then helpfully asks if it can search for nearby charging stations. This is a great feature. It turns out there are three within a half mile of my house that I never knew about. I didn’t need them. I rolled into my driveway with a sweaty brow and 2 percent battery charge remaining. The Leaf traveled 154.3 miles, 4.3 miles further than Nissan’s stated range while still packing 2 percent of charge. That’s pretty impressive.

A couple days later, I repeated the same uphill route at a more LA-traffic-reasonable 70 mph to see what effect speed would have on the Leaf’s battery. The range indicator dropped quickly at that speed. I had to turn around before hitting the Palmdale city limits. This time at 70 mph and going uphill 2,500 feet halfway, the Leaf made it 134.5 miles -- again with 2 percent charge remaining.

I plugged the Nissan into one of my garage outlets until it was fully charged. Here’s a word about recharging. Most of the time you don’t fully deplete your battery, so whenever you come home you just plug it in and forget about it till the next day, the same way you plug in your cellphone overnight. Unlike many, if not most, EV owners, I don’t have a Level II 240-volt charging outlet at my house. All I had was a typical 120-volt outlet like the one charging your computer right now as you read this. So the charge from empty to the full 40-kWh capacity of the battery took 30 hours. With a Level II charger it would have been much less than half that time, maybe seven hours. And since most people don’t fully deplete their batteries on a drive, topping off the tank can be a couple hours, depending. Had I been able to find a DC charger, the Leaf has a Level III charge port that would get it recharged from empty to 80 percent in just 40 minutes. So, much faster charging options exist out there.

The seats are a little too flat, if you ask some of us who have driven it.

The following Saturday morning, I decided to go for maximum highway range on a relatively flat stretch of I-10. The Leaf made it 161.4 miles thanks to gentle driving and speeds that hovered around 55 mph. Yes, that’s a painfully slow freeway speed. And I certainly felt some heat from the frustrated truck drivers who filled my mirrors with their angry headlights and giant chrome grilles. I was relieved to finally reach my exit ramp.

For the last test, it was time to see how far the Leaf could travel on a pure city route. Now, trying to deplete an EV’s battery pack on congested city streets takes, like, forever. But it brought me to areas of LA I had yet to explore, including the downtown location of the famous and delicious Mariscos Jalisco taco truck. Try the shrimp tacos!

To get a real-world sense of range, I accelerated normally and didn’t employ any special hypermiling tricks. I kept the Leaf’s e-Pedal regen braking engaged all day and, with few exceptions, was able to drive with one pedal the whole time. It was a long nine hours, but the Leaf managed to travel 151.6 miles before the gauge once again showed 2 percent of the battery charge remaining.

What’s interesting about all the miles traveled on these varied routes is that the Leaf delivered fairly consistent performance, regardless of terrain, speed or driving style. The mild springtime temperatures here were probably beneficial to maximizing range. And I didn’t once pin the accelerator fully to the floor. Aggressive driving would likely produce very different results. But over the course of those four tests totaling just over 600 miles, the Leaf delivered an average of 150.5 miles per charge, usually with 2 percent left in the tank. That’s within a half mile of what Nissan says it should deliver. If you can stop in somewhere on a long route and charge for 10 or 15 minutes while you get a cup of coffee, you can easily have a range of 200 miles.

With predictable performance like that, I think my range anxiety might finally be cured -- at least when it comes to the Nissan Leaf.